How To Install Windows 8 Guide

Installing Windows 8 Guide:

Congratulations! You have just brought a new computer into this world after carefully selecting and lovingly installing the components that will drive the user experience (at least until the next generation of stuff comes out). Alternatively you may have just watched your computer throw so many errors that it must think 0000FF is the new 000000, or you feel it is time for a change, so you are installing a new operating system. Windows operating systems are still the dominate OS for personal computers, so naturally you have purchased a copy of the new Windows 8 to install. Here is what you can expect when installing the operating system.

(Something important to note for this guide is that I installed the Release Preview of Windows 8 in a virtual machine, so it may vary from your install experience. If there is any difference though, it should be minor.)

The first step for installing any operating system is to inject the install media into your computer. This may involve inserting a disc into a drive or plugging in a USB drive; it depends on what you have. Regardless, once the media is connected you will need to reboot your computer so it can boot from the install media. Potentially you will also have to enter the BIOS to change the boot order of the computer, so that it will load the install media instead of the computer's primary storage volume. If you need to make that change though, consult the manual for the computer or motherboard.

Once the install media is loaded, the first screen you will come to asks for some basic preferences including language and keyboard configuration. After setting those options, hit the Next button to arrive at a screen asking what you want to do; install or repair your computer. We want to install so click 'Install now.'

Once the key is entered, you will be presented with a copy of the Windows 8 Usage license. You can read it or not, but you have to accept the license terms in order to continue.

At this point we are asked to input the Product Key, which is included with any legitimate copy of Windows 8. If you are reinstalling the operating system on a computer that came with it, there should be a sticker somewhere on the case with the key. You must enter the key because you cannot continue without it.

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Now we get to the point where the install process wants to know what it is doing. Is it upgrading from a previous or lower version of Windows, or is it being freshly installed? As this is a guide for installing Windows 8 and not upgrading it, we are going to select 'Custom: Install Windows only.'

This step is easily among the most important of the install process. Here we decide where the operating system is being installed and potentially the configuration of the computer as a whole. If the computer has an unformatted storage drive installed, Windows will suggest formatting the entire disk for it to use, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you would like to partition the disk though (and there are many reasons for doing so) you will want to click the 'New' button and tell it how large you want the new partition to be. If the drive already is partitioned, you will need to select which partition you want to install to, which will reformat the partition.

With that done, the computer will now begin the process of installing Windows 8. How long it takes to go through the steps of the process is almost impossible to predict as it depends on almost every component of your computer. During this process, the computer will restart twice (in my experience). Potentially one of the times it boots up it will ask if you want to install Windows. That just means it will boot from the install media instead of the internal storage. Just manually restart the computer and remove the install media.